


Without Armor Or Not At All

by the_ocean_burned



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Boyfriend Shirt trope, Literal Sleeping Together, SO, Sleepy children, also, and this is the first thing straight thing I've written since, bc kanej, but i had to, hand holding, how is this the first thing I've written for this fandom???, i think, my Mortal Instruments days, please let them be soft and happy I just want them to be soft and happy please and thank you, so haha this is prolly awful, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9475244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_burned/pseuds/the_ocean_burned
Summary: The first time Inej returns from a voyage and lots of introspection on Kaz's part. Also they hold hands and Inej wears Kaz's shirt.





	

Kaz Brekker had always prided himself on his ability to keep up appearances. He was able to fake calmness almost perfectly, whether his mental state mirrored his faux apathy or he was in absolute shambles inside. Nothing could faze him, at least not visibly, and he was glad for that. It meant that no one would ever see him as prey, as weak, as easily taken advantage of. His only outward weakness was his limp, but he had turned even that into something dangerous with his cane. Kaz Brekker was someone to be feared, or to be wary of at the very least, and everyone knew that.

Perhaps that was why Inej had drawn his attention. She had surprised him, which was a surprise all on its own. It had been a very long time since someone had managed to surprise Kaz, since he made it his business to know everything about everything that went on in Ketterdam. On top of that, she had snuck up on him – a nigh impossible task for anyone, as Kaz never let his guard down, but it was even more vexing that she had done it while wearing bells around her ankles and on a floor that creaked with the slightest application of pressure. It was, Kaz had to admit, amazing, and a girl with skills like that did not belong in a filthy place like the Menagerie.

Or, at least, that’s what Kaz convinced himself was his reasoning. It had nothing to do, he told himself, with the dark circles beneath her eyes, visible even in the dim light. It had nothing to do with the subtle, scared way that her shoulders curled inward; it had nothing to do with the quiet fear in her eyes; and it most certainly did not have anything to do with how small and innocent she seemed among all of these scantily-clad women with bruises on their cheeks, badly covered with cheap makeup. It had nothing to do with the way that every one of Kaz’s instincts screamed at him to get her far, far away from the Menagerie as he could when he saw how the natural sharp attentiveness in her eyes had been dulled by fear and too many unwanted touches. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way that Kaz saw a little of his own steel in the way she held her chin up defiantly, and it had nothing to do with the way that Kaz wanted to protect her the way he had never been able to be protected.

No, of course not. Kaz convinced Haskell to buy Inej’s contract purely because he knew that she could be the Wraith he had wanted at his side. It was business-related, nothing more.

Or so he told himself.

Kaz managed to convince himself of this for months before he finally allowed himself a little leniency with his emotions. He let himself trace his eyes over the curve of Inej’s throat or try to decide just how many colors were actually in Inej’s eyes, as long as Inej wasn’t watching. He let himself wonder every now and again what it would be like to brush that one stray curl of her hair that never stayed in her braid behind her ear. He let himself imagine another life, where he could bring himself to touch her and she would allow it, where he could cup her cheek in the palm of his hand and count the flecks of gold that glittered so mesmerizingly in Inej’s eyes.

But that life was not this one, so he kept everything to himself, finding himself once again incredibly grateful for his ability to hide behind a flawless, if fake, mask of calm.

He didn’t miss Inej’s glances, the practiced wall of formality that she lowered over her expression whenever their eyes met. He knew, somehow, that she was thinking of him as much as he thought of her, but he kept silent, because Inej deserved better. She deserved someone who could stand to touch her, who wouldn’t begin to drown again every time their skin brushed, someone who could love her as she deserved to be loved. Kaz was not that person.

Even though he knew that nothing good could possibly come of it, he couldn’t ever deny himself the momentary comforts of imagining that he could someday be someone that she could allow to touch her. It was all he had left of his childhood habit of daydreaming, this imaginary Kaz and the imaginary life that Kaz lived. In that life, Kaz had not had to cling to Jordie’s dead body to survive, and Inej had never had to suffer through life at the Menagerie, and they had been able to meet and fall in love however normal teenagers who didn’t have to worry about almost dying on a regular basis did.

And then Van Eck took Inej and Kaz broke. He had gotten so used to having Inej around, steady, a voice of reason, comforting, that when she was gone, he found himself trying to lean on her – just a little, because he was so tired and all he wanted was to rest for _just a second, please_ – and overbalancing. Without Inej, Kaz had surprisingly little impulse control. He couldn’t think straight. He tried to get into Van Eck’s head, but he couldn’t seem do it properly. Without Inej, he was just a scared boy, alone against a world trying to force him back to his knees. Without Inej, his impassive façade that he had gotten so good at hiding behind was his only defense and his only weapon.

He missed Inej.

When they got her back, it felt like Kaz had just gotten off a ship, the ground suddenly steady beneath him again after weeks of hectic, nauseating quaking. Had he been anyone else, he would have crushed her to his chest, would have held her close and sworn to every single one of her Saints in his stumbling, horrifically accented attempt at her language that he would never let her go again.

But he was only Kaz, so he could only give her a pathetic attempt at reassurance as they fled from Van Eck. He couldn’t bear to hug her, couldn’t even manage a smile, and it twisted his stomach with something he was unfamiliar with and wasn’t about to bother trying to name. He didn’t like thinking about things he felt, because, one way or another, they always led back to Jordie, and they always ended in panic and the sea. Unless, of course, it was Inej, but Inej had always been different.

Inej kept his thoughts still, away from Jordie and away from Pekka Rollins and away from the Dregs and away from all the rumors about Dirtyhands, about the Bastard of the Barrel. Inej gave him room to be Kaz Reitveld, a boy who could be healed, could be saved, instead of Kaz Brekker, who was too far gone to ever be able to walk in the light again.

Kaz wasn’t sure what he was going to do when Inej left. Yes, he had bought her _The Wraith,_ and yes, he was going to make sure that she could do whatever she wanted for the rest of her life, but he knew it would weaken him. He had kissed her, for just that bare second, just on her shoulder, and it had nearly shattered that perfect impassiveness that he had mastered so many years ago. Actually, it had already been thinner than usual, softer, less convincing, because Inej did that to him no matter what the situation was. She was a Grisha of a different sort than Nina or Jesper. Inej warped and twisted and softened Kaz, and Kaz allowed it because, Saints, how was he supposed to make Inej stop when she didn’t even realize what she was doing to his head? To his heart? To _him?_

Without Inej, Kaz was weak, but with her, he was vulnerable. He couldn’t win. The logical, emotionless, strictly self-preservative route would have been to remove her from his life entirely, but he found that he adamantly refused to even consider that. He needed Inej, even if he knew that it was a vulnerability too easily taken advantage of, and he did not want her to leave.

She left anyway. Kaz hadn’t said anything to attempt to convince her to stay, and he didn’t think that would have changed her mind, so he kept it to himself. There was no point in it if it wasn’t going to do anything, and being vulnerable, even just in front of Inej, scared Kaz more than he ever would have admitted. Vulnerability in Ketterdam could get you killed, and Kaz wasn’t going to go down without one hell of a fight, but when it came to Inej, she could probably slit his throat and he’d thank her for it.

At first, Kaz found it hard to believe that Inej would actually come back. What was there for her to return to? A building – still standing even if Tante Heleen was no longer able to run business out of it or any other building – to remind her of everything she’d suffered through, grimy Ketterdam rooftops and greasy walls to climb, and the constant danger that the Dregs offered? No, there was nothing worth her attention in Ketterdam. Had Nina stayed, maybe Kaz would have found it easier to believe that Inej would return, but she was gone, Matthias was dead, Wylan and Jesper were so caught up in each other that they practically ignored everyone around them, and Kaz couldn’t quite trust her with all of him, no matter how hard he tried. There was nothing for Inej there, not when she had the entire world stretched out in the palm of her hand.

And yet, despite Kaz’s skepticism to the contrary, Inej came back. When she slipped in through the window, Kaz wasn't surprised, per se, just mildly relieved. The only reason he wasn't surprised was because he had taken to walking past the docks every day since Inej had left, trying to ignore the tiny hope that singed his lungs with each breath and sang _she'll be back soon, she'll be back soon, just a little longer,_ in time with his heartbeat. He took a few seconds to slip his gloves off and sign one last sheet of paper, pretending that he wasn't trying to stifle the joy bubbling warmly in his chest, before he turned to face her.

She hadn't changed much. She was still small-framed and wiry and lithe, still just as beautiful as she had been when she'd left. Her eyes were still big and dark and perceptive, and Kaz could still probably spend hours losing himself in them. Kaz could still see the slight form of two of her knives beneath her sleeves. Her skin was even darker than it had been, though, from exposure to the elements and actual sun instead of Ketterdam’s usual dreary grey skies, and she seemed lighter, as if her time away from Ketterdam had freed her from some massive burden that had hunched on her shoulders, unnoticed until it was gone. It probably had.

She also had a new scar, thin and red, that sliced brightly from her shoulder to her collar bone. Kaz pretended that the sight of it didn't set his blood on fire in his veins. He hoped whatever bastard had done that to her had suffered tenfold at Inej’s hand. If they hadn't, Kaz would find them and make sure they did.

“What business?” Kaz asked, as if his heart wasn't stuttering joyfully in his chest at the sight of her, as if she hadn't been gone for months, as if she was still his Wraith. As if everything was normal.

Inej's mouth quirked upward and she slipped silently from the windowsill to the floor. Even while he was watching her, he couldn't discern any noise from her movements. It was part of her charm.

“I see things haven't changed much while I was gone.”

Kaz only hummed noncommittally. Everything had changed when Inej left, but Kaz wasn't sure how to tell her that without sounding ridiculous.

Inej studied Kaz intently for a moment, her intense gaze not entirely uncomfortable.

“How long has it been since you slept?” she inquired after a moment.

Kaz took a second to think. It surprised him when he couldn't find an answer; he couldn't remember the last time he had slept. Correctly interpreting his silence, Inej raised an eyebrow at him.

“You should sleep.”

Kaz waved a hand dismissively and jerked his chin toward the stack of paperwork at his desk. “Running a gang requires more of my signature than I thought.”

Inej’s other eyebrow rose to join the other one. She was smiling for real, now, and her eyes were so soft and fond that Kaz thought that he would probably die if his heart kept fumbling like it was.

“You should sleep,” Inej repeated. “Your signature will still be there in the morning.”

Kaz hummed vaguely again. What he didn't tell her was that sleep was getting harder and harder to come by. It hadn't been as bad when Inej had been there, when Kaz had known even subconsciously that she had his back. He had felt safer, even though he knew it was ridiculous. While Inej was away, though, nightmares took to running rampant through Kaz’s mind while he slept, twisting memories of Jordie into even worse things and memories of Inej into frightful, broken images of her, bleeding or in pieces or sinking to the bottom of the ocean or some awful combination of the three. Kaz didn't particularly like waking up in a cold sweat, feeling hopeless and rather like he was drowning, so he avoided sleeping as much as possible. He couldn't wake up if he wasn't asleep in the first place.

But Inej was right, as she so often was. Kaz’s eyelids felt heavy and his eyes felt dry and itchy. He’d been awake for too long, and he knew it, but he didn’t want to sleep. _Maybe it would be better with Inej there,_ that obnoxiously hopeful little voice in the back of his head whispered. _Maybe she’d be able to help._

But for Inej to help, she’d have to be present when Kaz woke up, and that would mean she would see Kaz panic. She already had, of course, in that prison cart during the mission months before, but hearing it was a whole different thing than seeing it, and Kaz knew that all too well. He didn’t want Inej to see him like that, choking on his own breath and drowning in water that wasn’t there. Inej didn’t know about Jordie, and Kaz didn’t want her to, because he wanted to be able to pretend for her that he was still Kaz Brekker, the boy who could walk into an impossible situation, blindfolded and crippled and with the weight of the entire world on his shoulders and come out of it unscathed. He wanted to be able to be that unbreakable boy with iron bones and steel skin for her, because he knew that between the slaver’s ship and her time at the Menagerie, Inej had plenty of her own demons that she needed to fight. The last thing Kaz wanted to do was make her ward off his own nightmares as well as hers. She didn’t need that stress on top of everything else that lurked in her mind.

But Kaz was not unbreakable. He could barely manage the slightest of touches – holding her hand nearly sent him into a panic attack all on its own. His hands still shook when he took his gloves off in front of anyone else, even Inej, who he trusted more than he knew he logically should. Kaz was not made of iron and steel. He was merely flesh and bone, fragile and so easily broken, just like anyone else. He pretended otherwise, and he managed to fool almost everyone to the contrary, but he knew the truth. So did Inej, to an extent, and Kaz was sure that Jesper had some idea, even if he never voiced it. _I will have you without armor,_ Inej had said, _or not at all._ But Kaz had spent so long building his armor, making sure there were no cracks or weak spots and fusing it into his skin that removing it would hurt more than any bullet or knife. Removing his defenses would almost certainly remove all of the emotional barriers he had constructed as well, and that would leave him as vulnerable and open to attack as the child he had been last time he had allowed himself to be fooled.

 _But it’s Inej,_ those few shreds of optimism he hadn’t been able to banish reminded him. _Inej wouldn’t use it against you if you told her. Inej isn’t like that._

Logically, he knew that was accurate. Inej, for all of her prowess as a spy and as an assassin, was still soft in all the ways that made her stronger. Inej had never learned to kill her compassion and her love for life, and that was what made her so much better than Kaz. Kaz was a statue, cold and unfeeling and unable to care for anyone, but Inej was a goddess, frightening if you angered her but compassionate almost to a fault. She could relearn love and Kaz could not, and if he tried, it would destroy him.

But Inej was already killing him slowly with every smile and every laugh, because that was the only explanation for the way his breath caught in his throat and his heart trembled in his chest, so what did it matter if he tore himself apart? He knew that he’d rip anyone she asked to shreds, so why wouldn’t that include himself?

 _Damn emotions,_ Kaz thought bitterly. _I should’ve killed them when I had the chance._

But he hadn’t, so he had to deal with the consequences now. It hurt like hell, yes, and it terrified Kaz more than any fight ever would, but he couldn’t see how anything Inej caused could be truly bad.

He had been silent for too long. Inej crossed the room, deftly avoiding the creaking floorboards with the ease of practice, and tugged the pen out of his hand. She capped it and set it to the side, then turned her steady gaze on him.

“Kaz Brekker,” she started.

“Reitveld,” he blurted before he could second guess his choice. Seeing her confusion, he elaborated, “My real name is Kaz Reitveld.”

Inej’s eyes flitted ever so briefly to his arm where the _R_ was tattooed and Kaz knew without a doubt that she had made the connection.

“You should still sleep,” Inej said, and Kaz was glad she didn’t say anything about his telling her his real name. It soothed Kaz’s anxieties a little to know that she was able to accept these little truths that he offered without missing a beat.

Kaz opened his mouth to protest, but then his eyes met Inej’s and his ability to deny her wilted. She looked so concerned for him that she seemed almost sad and Kaz couldn’t stand to fight her on this when she looked like that. It was unfair, what she did to him, and Kaz still swore that she was going to kill him one day with the effect she had on his heart.

“If you insist,” Kaz sighed, standing. After a moment’s hesitation, he left his gloves on his desk.

“Good,” Inej said smugly, a pleased smile curling her lips.

Kaz rolled his eyes, then paused a little. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, too, dark enough that they almost Kaz’s. The sudden urge to brush a thumb over them, as if his touch could ever erase them, bubbled up inside Kaz. He forced it away.

“You should take your own advice,” Kaz grumbled as he tidied his desk as best he could, trying to delay the inevitable.

Inej just laughed. Kaz could have sworn that his heart stopped for a good ten seconds. Saints, he loved hearing her laugh like that, light and carefree.

“I’ll take it if you do.”

Kaz knew she meant nothing by it, that she was just teasing, but his mind didn’t like that reality so it leapt back to Imaginary Kaz’s life. In his head, Kaz took her by the hand and led her off to bed, where they curled up together and both of them slept through the night, undisturbed by nightmares and content. It was such a vivid image that Kaz could almost feel Inej’s back against his chest, her hair tickling his chin, the warmth of her, relaxed and happy.

His trip to Imagination Land was so sudden that it almost managed to startle him. Once his surprise had passed, the realization that he wanted that life – that peace, that contentment, that ability to be so thoughtless and carefree with skin-to-skin contact – slammed into him with a force that was almost desperate.

Inej must’ve caught something, some split second of something that wasn’t entirely Kaz Brekker, and she stepped closer, her expression concerned. Kaz sucked in a slow, soft breath through his nose and reached out to brush his fingers against hers. Water lapped at his toes. He couldn’t seem to manage to pull in a full breath. Surprised, Inej glanced down, then the look in her eyes warmed and she tangled their fingers together, pressing her palm against his, and Kaz could breathe again. This was okay. He could manage this much, at least. It helped that her hand was warm and solid, nothing like a corpse’s cold limpness. The water was gone.

Inej tightened her grip on his hand and tugged lightly at his arm. Kaz followed her out of the office and down the hall to Kaz’s bedroom. Inej headed straight for the window, smiling when she saw that the crows she had fed still sat outside the window, waiting for her. Kaz leaned against the doorframe for a moment and watched as she cooed at them, something warm curling sleepily in his chest. He thought he rather liked it.

She must’ve known he was watching her – of course she knew, she always did – because she turned to him with a questioning look. Half of Kaz wanted to tell Inej to stay, to ask if she would maybe curl up next to him in the bed. The mattress was big enough that they wouldn’t even have to touch if they didn’t want to. The other half of Kaz, the part of Kaz that had lost all sentimentality and valued only money and revenge, the part that drove him, the part that he especially hated, said that she needed to leave immediately.

Kaz wrestled with himself for a moment. Usually, he’d listen to that second half of himself without a thought, knowing without a doubt that it was the right choice. But, for once, Kaz wasn’t sure. He never was when it came to Inej.

To his surprise, the first half of him won. The only issue now was how exactly to put the image in his head into words and then get them out of his mouth without making a complete fool of himself. That seemed to be a more and more common concern of his, and the jury was still out on his feelings about that matter.

Inej left the windowsill and padded silently toward the door, clearly intending to leave. Before she could do so, or even say anything, Kaz had reached out and brushed his fingers against her wrist. It wasn’t much, just the barest of touches, but it sent Kaz’s pulse racing with uncalled for anxiety, and it was enough to catch Inej’s attention.

For a few desperate seconds, Kaz struggled to find words to explain to her what he wanted, but the best he could seem to do was a despicably vulnerable, soft, “Stay?”

Several emotions flickered through Inej’s eyes – surprise, wariness, confusion, concern, hope – before settling on fondness. To Kaz’s relief, she nodded. He hadn’t done too badly, then.

Awkward silence reigned for a few moments; Kaz assumed it was because neither of them had planned nor expected this. This situation was a surprise, to say the least, and Kaz wasn’t sure he liked it. Kaz hated surprises, especially when he was surprising himself. It was a distinctly unpleasant feeling.

“Do you have anything I could change into for the night?” Inej asked finally, glancing down at her outfit, which was mostly leather and rough cloth, more fit for sea travel than living on land as Kaz preferred to do. “I could to back to _The_ _Wraith_ and get some, I suppose, but –”

Kaz shook his head and turned to the small closet in the back corner of the room. “It’s fine.”

Inej waited silently until Kaz tossed her a t-shirt – one of his smaller, older ones – and turned back around to see if he had anything else that would fit her. Cloth rustled for a few seconds, and Kaz kept his back politely turned.

“Kaz,” Inej said softly. “You can turn around now.”

“I don’t have any –” Kaz started, then found he had lost his words.

Ever since that first time Kaz had seen Inej in the Menagerie, he had known she was attractive. Graceful. Gorgeous, even. But he had never once thought to call her cute. It was hard to think of someone as cute when they were slitting throats and vaulting across rooftops. Right then, though, all Kaz could think to call her was _too adorable to be allowed._

 _This may have been a bad idea,_ Kaz realized as his heart keeled over and fainted in his chest. _This may be the death of me._

Kaz’s shirt was long enough to be a dress on Inej – it almost went all the way down to her knees, even though it was small on him. Kaz couldn’t think straight; it was like his brain had short circuited.

Inej’s mouth quirked upwards a little at the corners and Kaz realized that she knew _exactly_ what she was doing. Kaz turned back around, cheeks burning. He couldn’t remember why he had thought this was a good idea. If she kept this up, he was going to have a heart attack.

By the time he turned back around, having changed into a more comfortable shirt, Inej was back on the windowsill. She was feeding the crows again, cooing softly at them as they ate who-knew-what from her palm. Kaz had to look away.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, but it must have been audible because he heard Inej laugh quietly in response.

Kaz closed his eyes, reminding himself that curling into the fetal position was not a good idea when Inej was in the room, even if it was habit. He’d been sleeping like that – making himself as small as possible to hide from possible midnight assassins and the shadows that lived under his bed and in his head – for as long as he was willing to remember.

In other words, since Jordie.

The mattress dipped and the blanket shifted as Inej lay down on the other side of the bed. There was at least a foot between them, but in the dim moonlight filtering softly through the window, Kaz could see that she was tense, wary.

“You don’t have to stay,” he murmured. It had taken him a few minutes to find the words, and another couple seconds to move them from his head to his tongue, but they needed to be said.

Inej shifted onto her side and shook her head. “I want to be here, Kaz. It’s just…”

She trailed off, and Kaz knew she was thinking of the Menagerie. Hatred, bright and white-hot, burst in Kaz’s chest. He had already shut down Tante Heleen, but he didn’t feel like it was enough. Kaz wanted to make Heleen suffer as all her girls had suffered, as _Inej_ had suffered. But Kaz knew that he had already crushed Heleen, knew that she could never hurt anyone else, and he knew that Inej wouldn’t wish Menagerie life on anyone, not even Tante Heleen.

So, instead of leaving the room and sending someone to rip Heleen slowly limb from limb, Kaz reached out and let his hand sit, palm open, in the middle distance between him and Inej. It wasn’t a demand or even a request, just an offer.

For a few terrifying seconds, Inej just studied Kaz. He could feel her gaze, as weighted as a promise and gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. Kaz didn’t move or retract his hand. She had wanted him without armor, and he was trying to give her that.

Finally, _finally,_ Inej reached out and rested her hand atop Kaz’s. For a moment, Kaz inhaled sea water and began to choke, but then Inej’s fingers slipped through the gaps between Kaz’s fingers and there was only air.

On impulse and not much else, Kaz pulled Inej’s hand forward and brushed his lips against her knuckles. Salt coated his tongue and the world rocked with the pulse of the waves around him. _No,_ he growled at himself. _Not now._

Kaz knew Inej didn’t miss the way his fingers trembled as he forced the water to recede, but she didn’t comment on it. For just a moment, her fingers shook in his. _I affect her as much as she affects me,_ Kaz realized. It was strange to think that Kaz had the same power to tilt the ground Inej stood on as she did to his.

“You’re not there anymore,” Kaz murmured against her fingers. “And you are never going to have that little control over your life again.”

A small, breathy sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sigh but not quite either escaped Inej. “I know, Kaz. You made me the Wraith.”

Kaz shook his head. “No. You did that all on your own. You’ve always been the Wraith, Inej. You’ve just had people force you to lock her away.”

“You make it sound like you’re some sort of savior.” There was a laugh in her voice.

“I’m the devil that slits saviors’ throats,” Kaz replied, matching her vaguely humorous tone.

“You’re no devil, Kaz Reitveld.” It sent a rather pleasant shiver down Kaz’s spine to hear his last name pronounced in the soft lilt of her voice. It sounded like a promise when she said it like that.

“Don’t say that when you don’t know the half of what I’ve done, Inej.”

“I never said you were an angel. But you’ve only done what you had to do to survive, and that makes you a fighter, not a devil. You’re not a bad man, Kaz, contrary to popular belief.”

That got Kaz to smile. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve her kindness, but he liked the way it made him feel warm and soft around the edges.

“Your inspirational speeches are far better than mine.”

“Now you’re just stating the obvious.”

The mood had lightened during the course of their soft conversation and the silence didn’t weigh it down any. Kaz found himself playing absentmindedly with Inej’s fingers and running his thumb along her knuckles. The warmth of her skin and the light grip she had on his hand anchored him to the present and kept the sea waiting to drown him at bay, so he took the opportunity to try to pretend, if for just a few minutes, that he was Imaginary Kaz.

“I think I’m going to get the Dregs tattoo before I leave again,” Inej said after a few minutes, her voice so soft that it was almost a whisper.

Kaz’s thumb paused in its arc over her hand, the declaration having brought him up short. He had never made her get the tattoo like the others had to, because he wasn’t going to be one to take away her control. She had been forced to get the feather tattoo at the Menagerie, and Kaz knew how much she had hated wearing its remnants once she was free of the place, knew how relieved she had been when Nina had removed it entirely. Kaz wasn’t willing to force anything like that on her ever again, and he wasn’t about to let anyone else do so, either.

“You’re sure?” Kaz’s voice was a little unsteady.

Inej hummed a soft affirmative and shifted a little, bringing her other hand to press against her forearm where the Menagerie tattoo used to be. “Yes. The Menagerie tattoo was a reminder that I was… was owned by Tante Heleen. That I was nothing more than property.”

There was the barest tremor in Inej’s voice. Kaz squeezed her hand as gently as he could manage, hoping that his fingers remembered how to be soft even if he didn’t.

“But the Dregs is family,” Inej continued in a low whisper. “The Dregs isn’t the Menagerie.”

Kaz nodded a little. He knew what she wasn’t saying: with the Dregs, she was the Wraith. She was important. With Heleen, she was just another Lynx; she was disposable.

“If that’s what you want, I can let the tattoo artist know to expect you tomorrow.”

Kaz knew Inej was smiling and wished she wasn’t backlit by the moonlight. He would have liked to see her smile. It was like a drug, that smile, and Kaz was an addict long past the possibility of rehabilitation.

“Thank you, Kaz.”

“Anything for you, Wraith.”

Inej fell asleep before Kaz did, which was unsurprising. Once he was sure she was asleep, Kaz extended his fingers just enough that they brushed the pulse point in her wrist, reminding him that she was real, that she was alive, that she was not in any danger with him.

Kaz had spent so long learning to be untouchable, to be ruthless and cruel and to ignore anything his heart told him, that he knew it would be hard to unlearn that. But he also knew that he wanted to unlearn it all. More than anything, Kaz wanted to be able to let down his armor just enough for Inej to slip through and see him for what he was. He wanted her to be able to see past Kaz Brekker, the boy he had become, and see Kaz Reitveld, the boy he wanted to be – the boy Ketterdam would tear to shreds, if given the chance. He wanted to be able to offer her his heart, as frightened and damaged as it was, without worrying that she would crush it under her heel.

Kaz wanted to be worthy of Inej, and he knew that he would do anything, no matter how irrational it was, to achieve that. It would be a long road, and he knew that, realistically, either he or Inej would probably die before they saw the end of it. _You’ll never know if you don’t try,_ chirped that optimistic little voice in his head.

For once, he couldn’t argue.


End file.
